The Sultan's Daughter (3 page)

‘Then your chances of coming face to face with him are, thank God, slender. Who is the other?'

‘Monsieur de Talleyrand-Périgord. His name was struck from the list of
émigrés
in '95, but he did not return from America until the autumn of '96; so he had not yet arrived in Paris when I was last there. He has since been made Foreign Minister, as I learned in Italy while assisting Fauvelet de Bourrienne with General Bonaparte's correspondence.'

‘It is a certainty, then, that before you have been for long back in Paris you will run into him at some reception.'

‘True, but I have little apprehension on that score.' Roger shrugged. ‘He and I have long been firm friends. Moreover, he is greatly in my debt. It was I who saved him from the guillotine by providing him with forged papers that got him safely out of Paris. He is not the man to forget that; and, although he knows me to have been born an Englishman, it should not be difficult to persuade him that I have served France well and have for long been French at heart.'

Georgina slowly shook her head. ‘You are the best judge of that. Yet I shall still fear that, through some accident, the fact that you are a secret agent sent from England will come to light.'

He frowned. “Knowing so well your psychic gifts, it troubles me somewhat to hear you say so. I only pray that your foreboding may not be due to the capacity that you have oft displayed for seeing into the future. Yet I do assure you that such a risk gives me small concern compared with a far greater one that always plagues me when I set out upon my missions.'

‘What greater risk could there be than of a discovery which would be almost certain to lead to your death?'

‘It is that, having acquired considerable influence with Barras, the most powerful man in the Directory, I may use it wrongly. On more than one occasion I have formed my own judgment and have acted in direct opposition to what I knew to be the official British policy.

‘In three separate matters upon which great issues hung I have done this, and all three times fortune has favoured me. But it is in the taking of such decisions that lies the real anxiety of my work. Each time I am faced with some crisis, in which a word from me may serve to sway the balance, I am beset with a desperate fear that I will adopt the wrong course. So far my judgment has proved right, but there can be no guarantee that it will continue so; and sooner or later, should I again take it upon myself to act contrary to Mr. Pitt's instructions, I may find that I have committed an error that will cost our country dear.'

‘I understand and sympathise, dear Roger.' Georgina stretched out a hand across the table and took his. ‘But in this new mission you have no cause for such a fear. You told me a while back that it was entirely nebulous. As no specific task has been enjoined upon you, you'll have no nerve-racking decision to take concerning the best way to accomplish it.'

He nodded. ‘You are right in that my terms of reference are, in general, vague. But Mr. Pitt has many minor agents in France whose regular reports have enabled him to follow the development of events in Paris. Upon them, he and his cousin Grenville at the Foreign Office-have formed more or less correct assessments of the most important men there. They regard General Bonaparte as the best soldier who has emerged from the Revolution. In that. I concur, and would go further. Having worked under him in Italy, I know him
also to be a great administrator, and I naturally informed them of my opinion. During the Revolution he was an extremist, and in recent months there have been strong rumours that he contemplates overthrowing the Directory by a
coup d'état
. You will readily appreciate that the very last thing Mr. Pitt and his colleagues would wish is to see France under a dictator who is not only a great General but has proclaimed it as a sacred cause to carry the doctrines of the Revolution by fire and sword through every country in Europe. In consequence, while I have been offered only opinions on how it might prove most profitable to develop my relations with other leading men, I have been definitely instructed to do my utmost to ruin General Bonaparte.'

‘Surely that makes sound sense and, apart from any qualms you may feel about harming a man who has given you his friendship, should cause you no uneasiness.'

‘Unfortunately it does, for I am by no means convinced that Mr. Pitt is right in his assumption that, given supreme power, the brilliant young Corsican would become the ogre that he supposes. Admittedly Bonaparte owed his first chance to show his abilities as a soldier to the patronage of Robespierre, and he has since deposed the sovereigns of the Italian States he overran in order to convert them into so-called “People's Republics”. Yet he went out of his way to treat the Pope with civility and formed a Court about himself at Montebello at which even his brother Generals kow-towed to him as though he were a reigning Monarch.'

‘You think, then, that he is already by way of abandoning his Republican principles?'

‘I think that any man so intelligent must realise the hopelessness of endeavouring to impose them upon Austria, Russia, Prussia and England; and, rather than challenge these mighty monarchical Powers, he would prefer to initiate an era of peace in which to build a new and prosperous France out of that country's present ruin.'

‘Does this mean that you have in mind to ignore again your master's orders and assist in furthering the ambitions of General Bonaparte?'

‘No, I would not say that. To start with it is most unlikely that it will ever lie in my power to make or mar the career of
such an exceptional man. But there is just a chance that some card might fall into my hand by playing which at the right time I could put a serious check to his designs, or even, perhaps, bring to naught a
coup d'état
launched by his followers with the object of making him the uncrowned King of France. Should such a chance occur, I would have to decide whether to play that card or withhold it. What greater risk could there be than that of making a wrong judgment which might perhaps bring death and disaster to Europe for a generation?'

As Roger finished speaking, Jim Button, the elderly houseman who had been with the family since his boyhood, came in and said, The carriage is at the door, Master Roger, and Dan was set on driving you down; so I've given him your valise.'

‘Thanks, Jim.' Roger stood up and Georgina with him. She had insisted on accompanying him down to the harbour; so her maid, Jenny, was waiting in the hall with the great hooded cloak of Russian sables in which Georgina always travelled in the winter.

Roger, who loved colourful clothes, was, for him, dressed very quietly in a grey cloth suit, black boots and a plain white cravat. Over them he put on a heavy, tight-waisted, multi-collared travelling coat. In one of the pockets of its wide skirt reposed a big flask of French cognac, in the other a small double-barrelled pistol. Having bidden Jim and Jenny a cheerful farewell, he donned a beaver hat with a flowerpot-shaped crown and led Georgina out to the carriage.

The port was little more than a quarter of a mile away and during the short drive they sat in silence, Roger with his arm round Georgina, her head upon his shoulder.

Down at the quay a boat was waiting. As they got out, a Petty Officer came forward and touched his forelock. Dan Izzard, Roger's devoted servant, climbed down from the box and put a small valise in the stern of the boat. Then, with a grumble that he was not going too, he wrung his master's hand and wished him a safe return. Turning, Roger took Georgina in his arms. For a long moment they embraced. All they had to say had already been said and their hearts were too full for further words, but as they kissed he felt the tears
wet on her cheeks. Releasing her, he stepped into the stern of the boat, the Petty Officer gave the order to cast off and a moment later the oars were dipping rhythmically as they drew away in the early winter twilight.

Aboard the sloop her Captain, Lieutenant Formby, was waiting to greet his passenger. Roger had already made the young man's acquaintance on the ship's arrival at Lymington ten days earlier, and had not been very favourably impressed. It was not that Formby lacked a pleasant personality, but Roger would have much preferred to be taken across by an older and more experienced man; for it had emerged during their conversation that Formby had been transferred recently from service in the Bristol Channel. However, Roger knew the French coast so well that he felt confident that he could identify headlands and bays along it of which Formby might be in doubt; so he had no serious misgivings on the score of possibly failing to locate the cove, a few miles south of Dieppe, at which he wished to land.

The rain had ceased and the wind had died down. While the little ship tacked out through the Channel to the Solent, then west along it, Roger remained on deck making desultory conversation with her Captain. But when she rounded the Needles she came head-on to a sullen swell that was the aftermath of the recent tempest. Roger had always been a bad sailor; so he decided to turn in and try to get some sleep while he could, in case it should become rougher when they were well away from land.

He slept soundly and did not wake until the Lieutenant's servant roused him at six o'clock with a mug of ale and a plate of meat sandwiches. Sitting up in his narrow cot he slowly drank the ale, but eyed askance the doorstep slices of bread with their filling of red, underdone beef. Knowing the sort of fare which would be set before him during such a crossing, he had come provided with food more to his taste. Opening his little valise, he took from it two hard-boiled eggs and a partridge—one of the last of the season—which he gnawed to the bone.

Seeing no reason to get up, he lay in his bunk all the morning reading a book. At midday he dressed and went on deck. It was Formby's watch below and his Second-in-Command,
a stodgy, moon-faced fellow named Trumper, stood near the binnacle, keeping an eye on the sails. Having acknowledged Trumper's greeting, Roger quickly turned away and began to pace the narrow quarter-deck.

As he reached its limit amidships, he noticed one of the hands coiling down a rope at the foot of the mast. The man's face seemed vaguely familiar, so he stopped and asked, ‘Have I not seen you somewhere before?'

The sailor straightened himself and replied with a surly frown. ‘Aye. My name be Giffens and you knows me well enough though it be a few years since we met. I were groom up at Walhampton to Miss Amanda afore you married she.'

Roger nodded. ‘I recall you now. But I find it surprising that you should have chosen to go to sea rather than continue to care for horses.'

‘Chosen!' Giffens echoed with a snort. ‘There were no choice about it. I were catched by the Press Gang in Christchurch three months back.'

‘Indeed. But the servants of the quality are immune from pressing. You had only to show that you were in Sir William Burrard's service to secure your release.'

‘I were so no longer. Sir William got to know that I were a member of the Corresponding Society. 'E were that angry that 'e took 'is cane to me and drove me from Walhampton 'Ouse. Aye, and with 'alf a week's wages owing me ter boot.'

‘So,' remarked Roger coldly, ‘you are a member of the Corresponding Society. As such, you would no doubt like to see the King dethroned and a bloody revolution here, similar to that there has been in France?'

Giffens eyed him angrily. ‘I've naught against King George, but I 'ave against gentry the like o' you. To further your own fortune in some way you've a mind to go to France, an' a word with others of your kidney is enough to 'ave a sloop-of-war bidden to land ye there. Yet what of us afore the mast who 'as the doin' of it? Should we be taken by the Frenchies us will find ourselves slaves chained to an oar in them's galleys.'

It was a point of view that Roger had never before had put to him. Had he heard it voiced in other circumstances he would have agreed that it was hard upon the common seaman
that his lot, perhaps for years, should he be made a prisoner-of-war, would be the appalling one of a felon. On the other hand, the officers who ordered him into danger could count upon being treated fairly decently and were often, after only a few months of captivity, exchanged for enemy officers of equivalent rank.

But for some years past there had been serious unrest in England. Among the lower orders the doctrines of atheism and communism rampant in France had spread alarmingly. In Bristol, Norwich and numerous other cities troops had had to be used to suppress riots and defend property. In London mobs many thousands strong had publicly demanded the abolition of the Monarchy and the setting up of a People's Republic. Mr. Pitt had found it necessary to suspend Habeas Corpus and had passed a law sentencing to transportation for life street agitators caught addressing more than four people. Such measures might appear harsh but, having witnessed the horrors of the French Terror, Roger felt that no severity against individual trouble-makers was too great, when only by such means could they be prevented from bringing about the destruction in a welter of blood and death of all that was best in Britain. By admitting to being a member of the revolutionary Corresponding Society, Giffens had virtually revealed himself as a potential
sans-culotte;
so Roger said to him sternly:

‘I go to France not for my own pleasure or profit, but upon the King's business. And since you are now one of His Majesty's seamen, however unwillingly, it is your duty to accept any risk there may be in doing your part to land me there.'

Giffens spat upon the deck, ‘Aye! Duty and weevily biscuits, that's our lot. But you're not one of my officers; so it's not for you to preach duty to me.'

‘Speak to me again like that,' Roger snapped, ‘and I'll have the Captain order you strapped to a grating for six lashes of the “cat”.' Then he swung on his heel and recommenced pacing the quarter-deck.